Prasenjit Duara Historicizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and When Bom in Assam, India, Prasenjit Duara's educational and professional odyssey took him from undergraduate training at St. Stephens College in Delhi, to the doctoral program at Harvard, teaching at George Mason University and Stanford University, to his current position at the University of Chicago. A specialist in modern Chinese history, Duara's first book was the prizewinning Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford Calif.: Stanford Univer- sity Press, 1988), which has been translated into both Chinese and Japanese. This For a long time now nationalism and national identity have been understood essay reprises ideas from Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Nar- within the assumptions of modernization theory. The effort to define nationalism ratives of Modem China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). His cur- as a quintessentially modern phenomenon in which citizens identify with the rent work, on the period of Japanese rule in Manchuria, the time of the ' 'last nation-state has done much to clarify nationalism. At the same time, however, emperor," attempts to illuminate the fatal embrace between Japanese colonialist this effort has tended to fix and objectify what is after all, a subjective, fluid and discourse and Chinese nationalism. Duara explores the contesting discourses of elusive phenomenon—the meanings of the nation to both citizens and nation- the nation, particularly the intersections of language and the competing visions state.1 In this essay I take a critical historical view of national identity and I of political communites. Borrowing from the work of deconstructionists, he is explore the phenomenon less in its distinctiveness than in its changing relation- concerned with the silences and repressions that occur in all acts of articulation. ships to other visions of political community, both historical and contemporary. Using the history of China, but also of South Asia and Japan, as his laboratory, In the problematique of modernization theories, the nation is a unique and Duara contends with the Gellner and Anderson theories of nationalism that locate unprecedented form of community which finds its place in the oppositions be- the nation in modernity and posit a radical disjuncture with premodern political tween empire and nation, tradition and modernity, and center and periphery. As communities. Whatever the importance of print capitalism in European nation- the new and sovereign subject of history, the nation embodies a moral force which making, in China an intimate relationship between the written and spoken word— supersedes dynasties and ruling clerisies, which are seen as merely partial subjects the power of pan-Chinese myths, for example, and their incorporation in folk representing only themselves through history. By contrast, the nation is a collec- drama—provided a common cultural reservoir from which agrarian peoples tive subject—whose ideal periphery exists only outside itself—poised to realize gained a sense of identity with a broad cultural and political order. Without eliding its historical destiny in a modern future.2 This narrative depicts not only the the distinctions between modern identities and others, Duara emphasizes the mul- history of nationalism, but constitutes the master narrative of much modern his- tiplicity of identities at all times and the resemblances between more traditional tory, allowing the nation-state to define the framework of its self-understanding. and national identities. My goal is to take a step in extricating history from this framework and devise a Two particularly strong conceptualizations of the political community emerged perspective from which it can historicize the nation and national identity itself. in imperial Chinese society, one the ethnic self-description of the Han people, the To see the nation as a collective subject of modernity obscures the nature of other a community based on the cultural values of the elite. In the twentieth national identity. I propose instead that we view national identity as founded upon century modern discourses of the nation from outside influenced Chinese intel- fluid relationships; it thus both resembles and is interchangeable with other po- lectuals and political actors, who combined them with selective use of existing litical identities. If the dynamics of national identity lie within the same terrain Chinese ideas of political communality. The emergence of the modem nation- as other political identities, we will need to break with two assumptions of mod- state system also powerfully determined the further elaboration of national dis- courses and identities as it promoted ethnic loyalty to territory. Rejecting any essentialist view of the nation, Duara proposes to look at national communities Prasenjit Duara, "Histoncizing National Identity, or Who Imagines What and When," unpublished as relationships based on inclusions and exclusions and argues that "an incipient essay outlining some ideas on the relationship between nationalism and history that are more fully developed in Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: nationality is formed when the perception of the boundaries of community are University of Chicago Press, 1995). transformed: when soft boundaries are transformed into hard ones." Hardening Author's note: This essay outlines some ideas on the relationship between nationalism and history occurs when a community adopts a master narrative of descent, thus defining which are more fully developed in my book Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives more exclusively who belongs and who is outside. of Modem China Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

150 151 152 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 153 ernization theory. The first of these is that national identity is a radically novel on print capitalism as enabling the imagining of a common destiny and the con- form of consciousness. Below, we will develop a crucial distinction between the cept of simultaneity ignores the complex relationship between the written and modern nation-state system and nationalism as a form of identification. National spoken word. In agrarian civilizations this interrelationship furnishes an extremely identification is never fully subsumed by it and is best considered in its complex rich and subtle context for communication across the culture. For instance, in relationships to other historical identities. The second assumption is the privileg- pan-Chinese myths, such as that of Guandi, the god of war, not only were oral ing of the grand narrative of the nation as a collective historical subject. Nation- and written traditions thoroughly intertwined, but the myth provided a medium alism is rarely the nationalism of the nation, but rather represents the site where whereby different groups could announce their participation in a national culture very different views of the nation contest and negotiate with each other. Through even as they inscribed their own interpretation of the myth (through the written these two positions, we will seek to generate a historical understanding of the and other cultural media, such as folk drama and iconography) (Duara 1988b). nation that is neither historically determinist nor essentialist, and through which As such, these groups were articulating their understanding of the wider cultural we might try to recover history itself from the ideology of the nation-state. and political order from their own particular perspective. There were large num- The two most influential recent works on the subject of nationalism—by Ben- bers of people in agrarian societies who were conscious of their culture and edict Anderson and Ernest Gellner—have stressed the radically novel form of identity at multiple levels, and in that sense were perhaps not nearly so different consciousness represented by national identity. Both analysts identify national from their modern counterparts. consciousness conventionally as the coextensiveness of politics and culture—an The point is not so much that national identity existed in premodern times; overriding identification of the individual with a culture that is protected by the rather it is that the manner in which we have conceptualized political identities state. Both also provide a sociological account of how it was only in the modern is fundamentally problematic. In privileging modern society as the only social era that such a type of consciousness—where people from diverse locales could form capable of generating political self-awareness, Gellner and Anderson regard "imagine" themselves as part of a single community—was made possible. Gell- national identity as a distinctive mode of consciousness: the nation as a whole ner provides a full account of this discontinuity. Preindustrial society is formed imagining itself to be the unified subject of history. There is a special and re- of segmentary communities, each isolated from the other, with an inaccessible stricted sense in which we can think of a unified subjectivity; we shall have high culture jealously guarded by a clerisy—Gellner's general term for literati occasion below to review it in our discussion of nationalism as a relational iden- ruling elites. With the growth of industrialism, society requires a skilled, literate, tity. But this restricted sense of unity is not unique to modern society.4 The deeper and mobile work force. The segmentary form of communities is no longer ade- error, however, lies in the general postulate of a cohesive subjectivity. quate to create a homogenously educated work force in which the individual Individuals and groups in both modern and agrarian societies identify simul- members are interchangeable. The state comes to be in charge of the nation, and taneously with several communities that are all imagined; these identifications through control of education creates the requisite interchangeability of individu- are historically changeable, and often conflicted internally and with each other. als. The primary identification with segmentary communities is transferred to the As we shall see in the following section, Chinese people historically identified nation-state (1983). In Anderson's view, the spread of print media through the with different types of communities, and when these identifications became po- capitalist market made possible a unity without the mediation of a clerisy. Print liticized they came to resemble national identities. To be sure, this does not val- capitalism permitted an unprecedented mode of apprehending time that was idate the claim of some nationalists that the nation had existed historically as a "empty" and "homogenous"—expressed in an ability to imagine the simulta- cohesive subject gathering self-awareness and poised to realize its destiny in the neous existence of one's co-nationals (1983). modern era. Premodern political identifications do not necessarily or Ideologi- I believe that this claim of a radical disjuncture is exaggerated. The long history cally develop into the national identifications of modern times. A new vocabulary of complex civilizations such as that of China does not fit the picture of isolated and a political system selects, adapts, reorganizes and even re-creates these older communities and a vertically separate but unified clerisy. Scholars have filled identities. Nonetheless, the fact remains that modern societies are not the only many pages writing about complex networks of trade, pilgrimage, migration, and ones capable of creating self-conscious political communities. sojourning that linked villages to wider communities and political structures. This The dominant historiography of modern China in the West has also preferred was the case as well in Tokugawa Japan and eighteenth-century India (Bayly to see nationalism in China as a purely modem phenomenon. Joseph Levenson 1983; Habib 1963). Moreover, even if the reach of the bureaucratic state was observed a radical discontinuity between a nationalistic identity which he believed limited, recently developed notions of the culture-state3 indicate the widespread came to Chinese intellectuals around the turn of the twentieth century, and earlier presence of common cultural ideas which linked the state to communities and forms of Chinese identity. The high culture, ideology and identification of the sustained the polity. mandarin, he believed, were principally forms of cultural consciousness, an iden- It was not only, or perhaps even primarily, the print media that enabled Han tification with the moral goals and values of a universalizing civilization. Thus Chinese to develop a sharp sense of the Other, and hence of themselves as a the significant transition here is from a "culturalism" to a nationalism, to the community, when they confronted other communities. The exclusive emphasis awareness of the nation-state as the ultimate goal of the community (Levenson 154 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 155

1964). Culturalism referred to a natural conviction of cultural superiority that other than a hidden form of relativism. We have tended to accept Chinese dec- sought no legitimation or defense outside of the culture itself. Only when, ac- larations of universalism at face value far more readily than we do other official cording to Levenson, cultural values sought legitimation in the face of the chal- doctrines (perhaps because it plays a crucial role as the Other in interpretations lenge posed by the Other in the late nineteenth century, do we begin to see of the encounter with the nation-states of the west). "decaying culturalism" and its rapid transformation to nationalism—or to a cul- Viewing "culturalism" (or universalism) as a "Chinese culturalism" is to see ture protected by the state (politicization of culture). it not as a form of cultural consciousness per se, but rather to see culture—a It is very hard to distinguish "culturalism" as a distinct form of identification specific culture of the imperial state and Confucian orthodoxy—as a criterion from ethnic or national identification. In order for it to exist as a pure expression defining a community. Membership in this community was defined by partici- of cultural superiority, it would have to feel no threat from an Other seeking to pation in a ritual order which embodied allegiance to Chinese ideas and ethics obliterate these values. In fact, this threat arose historically on several occasions centered on the Chinese emperor. While this conception of political community and produced several reactions from the Chinese literati and populace. First, there may seem rather distant from nationalism, one should consider the fact that the was a rejection of the universalist pretensions of Chinese culture and of the prin- territorial boundaries and peoples of the contemporary Chinese nation correspond ciple that separated culture from politics and the state. This manifested itself in roughly to the Qing empire that was held together ideologically precisely by these a form of ethnocentrism that we will consider in a moment. A second, more subtle, ritual practices. A look at the ideas of Confucian modernizers writing in the late response involved the transformation of cultural universalism from a set of sub- nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as Kang Youwei and Zhang Zhi- stantive moral claims into a relatively abstract official doctrine. This doctrine was tong, reveal that the national community they had in mind was constituted by often used to conceal the compromises that the elite and the imperial state had to Confucian cultural principles that would include ethnically non-Han peoples— make in their ability to practice these values or to conceal their inability to make such as the Manchus—as long as they had accepted (Chinese) cultural principles. people who should have been participating in the cultural-moral order actually This was, of course, challenged by the revolutionaries of 1911, who saw nation- do so. hood as based on inherited "racialist" (or ethnocentric), not cultural traits. How- Consider the second reaction first. The Jin and Mongol invasions of North ever, it is important to note that after the 1911 revolution, the revolutionaries China during the twelfth century and their scant respect for Chinese culture pro- themselves reverted to the boundaries of the Qing empire to bound their nation; duced an ideological defensiveness in the face of the relativization of the con- m'oreover, the Communist version of the nation builds upon a conception ception of the universal empire (tianxia). In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries grounded in the imperial idea of political community. Confucian universalists could only maintain their universalism by performing two Just as significantly, during the Jin invasion of the twelfth century, segments sleights of hand: connecting individuals to the infinite (severing theory from fact) of the scholar class completely abandoned the concentric, radiant concept of uni- and internalizing the determination of personal values, both of which represented versal empire for a circumscribed notion of the Han community and fatherland a considerable departure from the traditional Confucian concern with an objective (guo) in which the barbarians had no place. This ethnocentric notion of Chinese- moral order (Trauzettel 1975). During the Ming dynasty, the Han Chinese dynasty ness was, of course, not new. Chinese authors typically trace it to a quotation that succeeded the Mongols, Chinese historians dealt with the lack of fit with the from the Zuo Zhuan: "the hearts of those who are not of our race must be dif- Chinese worldview simply by maintaining a silence (Wang 1968, 45-46). When ferent" (Li Guoqi 1970, 20; Dow 1982, 353). Others (Yang 1968; Langlois 1980, we look at the tribute trade system which is often cited as the paradigmatic ex- 362) find it still earlier in the concentric realm of inner and outer barbarians found pression of its universalistic claims to moral superiority, the imperial state adapted in the Shang Shu: pacific cultural activities were to prevail in the inner part, whose readily to the practical power politics of the day. In the early nineteenth century, inhabitants were not characterized as ethnically different, with militancy toward the tiny northwestern khanate of Kokand (like the Jesuits, the Russians, and sev- the outer barbarians, who appeared to be unassimilable. Trauzettel believes that eral others before)successfully challenged the Qing tribute system and had estab- in the Song dynasty, this ethnocentrism brought together state and people. The lished all but the formal declaration of equality with the Chinese empire. The state sought to cultivate the notion of loyalty to the fatherland downward into Qing was forced into a negotiated settlement but it continued to use the language peasant communities, from among whom arose resistance against the Jin in the of universalism—civilizing values radiating from the son of heaven—to conceal name of the Chinese culture and the Song dynasty (1975). the altered power relations between the two (Fletcher 1978b). While we see the ethnic nation most clearly in the Song, its most explicit Thus the universalistic claims of Chinese imperial culture constantly adapted advocate in the late Imperial period was Wang Fuzhi. Wang likened the differ- to alternative views of the world order which it tended to cover with the rhetoric ences between Manchus and Han to that between jade and snow, which are both of universalism: this was its defensive strategy. It seems evident that when the white but different in nature, or more ominously, between a horse and a man of universalistic claims of this culture were repeatedly compromised and efforts were the same color whose natures are obviously different (Li Guoqi 1970, 22). To be made to conceal these compromises, advocates of this universalism were oper- sure, it was the possession of civilization (wen) by the Han that distinguished ating within the tacit idea of a Chinese universalism—which is of course none them from the barbarians, but it did not keep Wang from the view that' 'it is not 156 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 157 inhumane to annihilate [the barbarians]... because faithfulness and righteousness discourses of the nation-state (see below) as by the historical principles involved are the ways of human intercourse and are not to be extended to alien kinds [i-lei in defining community that we have traced above. The constitutional monarchists, (yilei)]" (in Langlois 1980, 364). Although Wang may have espoused the most represented by Kang Youwei, inherited the Confucian culturalist notion of com- extreme view of his generation, several prominent scholars of the Ming-Qing munity. Although Kang was influenced by modern Western ideas, the conception transition era held on to the idea of the fundamental unassimilability of the yi of political community that he retained drew on culturalist Confucian notions. (barbarian) by the Hua (Chinese) (see Onogawa 1970, 207-21; and Wu Wei-to We see this in his lifelong devotion to the emperor (Protect the Emperor Society), 1970, 261-71). which in the political context of the time meant more than a nostalgia for mon- Despite the undoubted success with which the Qing made themselves accept- archy. Since the monarchs were Manchu and not Han, it implied that he was able as the legitimate sons of heaven, they were unable to completely suppress convinced that community was composed of people with shared culture and not the ethnocentric opposition to their rule either at a popular level or among the restricted to a race or ethnic group (imputed or otherwise). scholarly elite. The anti-Manchu writings of Wang Fuzhi, Huang Zongxi, and Gu The revolutionaries, such as Zhang Binglin and Wang Jingwei, articulated their Yanwu during the early period of Qing rule together with collections of stories opposition to this conception by drawing on the old ethnocentric tradition that of Manchu atrocities during the time (for example, Mingji Yeshi's Unofficial acquired new meaning in the highly charged atmosphere of the 1900s. To be sure, History of the Late Ming) were in circulation even before the middle of the Zhang was a complex figure whose thought can scarcely be reduced to any single nineteenth century (Wu Wei-to 1970, 263). Zhang Binglin, for instance, claims strain. But he and his associate Zou Rong succeeded in articulating an image of to having been nourished by a tradition both in his family and in wider Zhejiang the new community that was persuasive to many in his generation. At the base society which held that the defense of the Han against the barbarians (Yi Xia) was of this reformulation of the old ethnocentrism was a dialectical reading of Wang as important as the righteousness of a ruler (Onogawa 1970, 216). Certainly Han Fuzhi's notions of evolutionism plus a new Social Darwinist conception of the ethnic consciousness seems to have reached a height by the late eighteenth cen- survival of the fittest races. The complex architecture of Zhang's ideas of the tury, when the dominant Han majority confronted the non-Han minorities of nation seems as much to use modern ideas to justify an ethnocentric celebration China in greater numbers than ever before over competition for increasingly of the Han as it was a selective use of the past to ground the present. Modern scarce resources (Naquin and Rawski 1987). Thus it is hardly surprising to find nationalists like Kang and Zhang were each engaged in dialogues with disputed that, from at least the time of resistance to the increased foreign presence in South legacies which were, nonetheless, authentic and by no means completely assim- China after the Opium Wars through to the Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1900, there ilable by modern discourses. existed a general expectation, not only among the elite, but also among the pop- ulace, that the state would protect the culture and the people of the empire (Wak- eman 1966; Esherick 1987). Though this identification may not have affected NATIONS, NATION-STATES AND AMBIVALENCE every segment of the population, French peasants, too, had little conception of TOWARD ANTIQUITY the nation until the end of the nineteenth century, as Eugen Weber has reminded us (Weber 1978). What is novel about modern nationalism is not political self-consciousness, but We are able to discern at least two conceptualizations of the political com- the world system of nation-states. This system, which has become globalized in munity in imperial Chinese society: the exclusive ethnic-based one founded on a the last hundred years or so, sanctions the nation-state as the only legitimate form self-description of a people as Han, and a community based on the cultural values of polity. It is a political form with distinct territorial boundaries within which and doctrines of a Chinese elite. What has been described as culturalism is a the sovereign state, "representing" the nation-people, has steadily expanded its statement of Chinese values as superior but, significantly, not exclusive. Through role and power. The ideology of the nation-state system has sanctioned the pen- a process of education and imitation, barbarians could also become part of a etration of state power into areas that were once dominated by local authority community sharing common values and distinguishing themselves from yet other structures. For instance,' 'children'' have come increasingly under the jurisdiction barbarians who did not share these values. In these terms, culturalism is not of the state as the institutional rules governing childhood were diffused to all significantly different from ethnicity, because like ethnic groups, it defines the types of nation-states over the last hundred years (Meyer and Boli-Bennet, 1978; distinguishing marks and boundaries of a community. The difference lies in the Meyer 1980). The term nationalism is often confused with the ideology of the criterion of admissibility: the ethnocentric conception refused to accept anyone nation-state, which seeks to fix or privilege political identification at the level of not born into the community, despite their educability into Chinese values, as the nation-state. The slippage in this relationship is a principal source of the part of the political community; whereas, the cultural conception did. instability of the meaning of the nation. During the years before the republican revolution of 1911, when modern na- The lineage of the sovereign territorial conception may be traced to what Wil- tionalism took hold among the Chinese intelligentsia, the debates between them liam McNeil! has characterized as the system of competitive European states. about the nature of the future Chinese nation were shaped as much by modern From as far back as A.D. 1000, each of these states was driven by the urge to 158 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 159 increase its resources, population, and military technology over the others. In the strong contrary urge within nationalism to see itself as a modern phenomenon. their competition, these states gradually became dependent on capital markets, While on the one hand, nationalist leaders and nation-states glorify the ancient both externally and internally, which further propelled the development of their or eternal character of the nation, they simultaneously seek to emphasize the economy and the competition between them (McNeill 1982). In time, the Church unprecedented novelty of the nation-state, because it is only in this form that the came to sanction some of these emergent regional states by endowing them with people have been able to realize themselves as the subjects or masters of their a theory of sovereignty without at the same time obliging them to achieve uni- history. The fact that the nation-state represents this subjecthood is, of course, versalizing empire. This was possible because of the separation of spiritual and maintained parenthetically. temporal authority, or, in other words, the source of legitimacy from actual ex- There is thus a built-in ambivalence in modern nationalist ideology toward the ercise of power (Armstrong 1982). The culmination of this conception of the historicality of the nation. This ambivalence presents us with a window to view nation was first seen in the French Revolution and exemplified in the idea of history, not as something merely made up, but as the site of contestation and citizenship for all within the territory (Eley 1981). repression of different views of the nation. In the writings of Sun Yat-sen, the Elsewhere in the world, competition was never institutionalized in the same ambiguity is concealed through a political attack on his enemies. Sun argues that way. For instance, in China during the many periods of interdynastic struggles, China, which for him is the Han nation, was the world's most perfectly formed the divisions of the empire were brought to an end by a victor who established a nation because the people were bound together by all the five criteria that (for command polity that squelched the dynamic of competition among states. Simi- him) it took to form a nation: blood/race, language, custom, religion, and liveli- larly, although regional successor states emerged from the disintegration of the hood. At the same time, Sun is unclear on whether the nation is already fully Mogul empire in eighteenth-century India, the competition between them was not awakened or whether national consciousness needs to be further aroused. He is institutionalized in the same way. Moreover, from the point of view of sover- torn between these options because on the one hand nationalists like himself could eignty, legitimacy in China necessarily resided in the imperial center, in the Son fulfill their mission only if the Han people still suffered from a "slave mentality" of Heaven, and thus regional states were never able to claim any durable sovereign with no national consciousness. On the other hand, the preexisting fullness of status. Likewise, the most powerful successor state of the Moguls, the Hindu China as a nation was necessary for the legitimacy of any nationalist rhetoric. Marathas, strove not for territorial sovereignty but towards the Brahmin ideal of Initially, Sun maintained both positions by arguing that the awakening was also a universal ruler (Embree 1985, 32). a reawakening. There had been difficult historical periods when the Han people However, no contemporary state is a nation exclusively in this territorial sense. had risen to the occasion and revealed the fullness of their national being, as Even among the early modern European states, European dynasts had to combine during Han resistance to the Jurchens or the Mongols. Ultimately, however, Sun the theory of territorial sovereignty with ethnicity to create modern nation-states concealed this ambiguity by transforming it into a problem inherent in Confucian (Armstrong 1982). While most historical nations, defined as self-aware and even cosmopolitanism: the original spirit of Han independence had been weakened by politicized communities, lacked the conception of themselves as part of a system the cosmopolitanism which accepted alien rulers like the present Manchu regime of territorially sovereign nation-states, modern nations embody both territorial as rulers of the Chinese people. This was, of course, precisely the cosmopolitan- and ethnic conceptions. Of course, it may legitimately be asked to what extent ism advocated by his reformer enemies who advocated a China composed of all the (modern) nation-state system influences the political identities of its citizens. of the ethnic groups of the old empire. Sun and the republican revolutionaries As Balibar (1990) points out, the nation-state has doubtless developed the ability sought to mobilize a particular history not only to serve as the foundation of the to have territorial boundaries acquire a salience and have its citizens develop new nation-state, but to delegitimate the ideological core of the alternative terri- powerful attachments to these boundaries. Yet, even these territorial identifica- torial and culturalist conception of the nation (Sun 1986, 41-2).5 tions have to come to terms with historical understandings as we have seen in The ambivalence between the old and new is similarly contained by a narrative China in the case of the republican revolutionaries. More generally, territorial of a reawakening subject in Jawaharlal Nehru's history of India. Moreover, Neh- identifications have to bear some relationship to an inherited sense of the "home- ru's historical narrative also embeds a challenge to the Hindu-dominated nation- land"—even if this sense is a highly contested one. alist historiography of the time (Prakash 1990, 389). The historical unity of India Thus the shape and content of national identities in the modern era are a for Nehru lay in the actual historical development of the nation. The high points product of negotiation with historical identities within the framework of a modern of Indian history were the reigns of Asoka, the Guptas, the Muslim emperor Akbar nation-state system. From this vantage point the efforts by scholars—from Ke- and the Moguls—all of whom attempted to develop a political framework to unite dourie to Gellner—to vociferously debunk nationalist historiography for assum- the cultural diversity of the Subcontinent. Nehru saw civilizations and nations in ing an ancient history of the nation (the nation as a continuous subject gathering the organic metaphor of growth and decline. The great heights of Indian thought, self-awareness) seems misdirected because it neglects the important fact that na- culture, and science had been reached as early as the eleventh century and sub- tionalists always have to engage with their many histories, even when they are sequently entered a long dark period of rigidity and stagnation (Nehru 1960,121- manipulating them for their own purposes. It is also misplaced because it slights 28). To be sure, there were short cycles of creativity thereafter, especially during 160 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 161 the reign of Akbar, but the modern period had been dominated by the vigor and if the past is shaped by the present, the present is also shaped by the past as dynamism of the Europeans. It remained for the national movement in India to inheritance, and the most fertile questions lie in understanding how this dialectic realize the greatness of the Indian nation once again. However, the purpose of is articulated with the contest over the significance of national history. Nehru's narrative is exactly the opposite of Sun's. Whereas Sun's political strat- egy (at least in the period before the 1911 revolution) involved a specification— a narrowing—of the Chinese nation to the Han, Nehru was striving to build an IMAGINED NATIONS: WHO IMAGINES WHAT? Indian nation that was not exclusively Hindu. In doing so, Nehru's history created the founding narrative of the secular modern nation-state. While this narrative While the modem nation-state system clearly influences national identity—es- has managed to withstand attacks in academic and official historiography, it is pecially in its efforts to confine loyalty to a territory—the latter is by no means today being contested as never before in the realm of popular history—in the determined by the former. In order to understand national identity more fully, it conflict over temples and mosques. needs to be studied in relation to other identities, as part of the generalized cat- In Israel, as in India, the historical narrative is unable to contain the tension egory of political identity; this is its true terrain. When considered in this terrain between those who would emphasize the ancient and pristine essence of the nation we can see how the ambiguities, the changeability, the fungibility and interplay and those who stress the new and the modern. The conflict in Israel between the of national identity with other forms of identification can be as subversive of the religious Right, for whom the meaning of the nation is embodied in the sacred nation-state as it is supportive. And within this terrain we can ask if national books, and the more secular nationalists, who seek to project the nation along a identification is as privileged over others as the nation-state and nationalist leaders progressive vision, can be traced to the founding moment of the nation. The like to suggest. Handelmans have examined the conflict over the choice of the emblem on the Ever since Karl Deutsch, analysts of nationalism have emphasized how the Israeli flag in the course of 1948. "The emerging national culture of Israeli Jews nation-state, in the print era and after, has been able to avail of the proliferating tended to be secular, yet rooted in ancient Israel, and so again intertwined with mass media to facilitate the nation-building project. Few have emphasized how religion. Therefore the symbolism had to include the symbolism of the ancient this same technology also enables rivals of the nascent nation-state to construct that would be understood clearly as a source of secular culture" (Handelman and alternative forms of political and even national identity, whether in Breton, the Shamgar-Handleman, 216). But this was a heavy ambiguity for the emblem to Baltic states, Tibet or the Punjab. The state is never able to eliminate alternative bear and it flared into an open conflict between the Zionist religious parties and constructions of the nation among both old and new communities. The most the primarily secular ones. The religious parties wished to use the menorah, which successful states are able to contain these conceptions within relatively depoliti- is identified with the birth of the Israelites as a nation, the Temple cult, and cized spaces; but even where such states are older, as in western Europe, there statehood, blessed by the divine. The secularists wished to combine the symbol- are overt challenges to the established national form in almost every nation. ism of the menorah with that of the seven stars—the seven hours of the workday Walker Connor (1972) has shown us that there is scarcely a nation in the world— symbolizing the rationalization of labor and social benefits and, more widely, the developed or underdeveloped—where ethnic mobilization has not challenged the values of the Enlightenment. This metaphor rapidly came under scathing attack nation-state. Defying the presumption of the nation-state to restrict the term ' 'na- by the religious parties and the resulting official emblem of Israel, the Titus tionalism" to loyalty to itself, Connor insists on identifying these self-differen- menorah, "synthesized time (the last Jewish state), place (Jersualem, Israel), the tiating ethnic groups as in fact nations. Jewish people, and the qualities of the primordial and eternal. But the ratified Connor's identification of nationalism? within the nation-state reveals the con- emblem contained no motif of the innovative aspirations of modern Zionism for flicted but isomorphic nature of political identities: ethnic mobilization develops the future" (219-20)6 into national identification identical to the one it opposes. But the relationship The ambivalence about the historicality of the nation reveals a fundamental among different identities is more complex than this. Nationalism is often con- aporia for nationalists: if the people-nation has always been present historically sidered to override other forms of identification within a society, such as religious, then on what grounds can the present nation-state make a special claim to legit- racial, linguistic, class, gender, or even historical ones—to encompass these dif- imacy as the first embodiment of the people-nation' We have seen that nationalists ferences in a larger identity. I shall have more to say about the model of nested have been able to address this ambiguity through a variety of rhetorical strategies, identities implicit in this understanding in the next section; here I would like to but they have not been able to fully control the meaning of the nation's history. suggest that even when or where such an encompassment has been temporarily The real signifigance of this aporia lie in the possibilities it generates for contested achieved, the way in which the nation is imagined, viewed, and voiced by dif- meanings of the nation. Modernist and postmodernist understandings of the nation ferent self-conscious groups can indeed be very different. Indeed we may speak tend to view history epiphenomenally—as the space for forgetting and re-creating of different "nation-views," as we do "world-views," which are not overriden in accordance with present needs. A more complex view of history suggests that by the nation, but actually define or constitute it. In place of the harmonized, 162 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 163 monologic voice of the Nation, we find a polyphony of voices, overlapping and tecting other Asian nations from the corrupting influence of Western capitalism criss-crossing; contradictory and ambiguous; opposing, affirming, and negotiating bolstered Japanese national identity. To be sure, pan-Asianism also worked nicely their views of the nation. to promote Japanese imperialism in Asia, but it would be wrong to see only this Moreover, the shaping of identities is also historically changeable. The thesis dimension. Marius Jansen has written persuasively of the pan-Asianism of Mi- that modernization leads to nationalism can hardly be sustained anymore. De- yazaki Torazo, Oi Kentaro and others who inspired Sun Yat-sen and others with veloped nations have seen the birth of separatist identities where one might least their zeal to destroy Western imperialism. "A re-birth for oppressed peasantries expect to find them. Of the history of the relationship of the Ulster Irish, the elsewhere in Asia was, for them, a necessary adjunct and stimulus to ameliorating Welsh, and the Scots to Britishness, historically the Scots may have had the the peasants' lot in Japan" (Jansen 1967, 219). weakest cultural basis for a separatist identity. Yet the circumstances of the 1960s In Europe today, we see the contradictoriness of political identifications in full and 1970s gave rise to a resurgent Scottish nationalism (Breuilly 1982, 280-90; flower. Resurgent nationalism has surfaced in tandem with the near-realization Agnew 1987, 143-59). Areas of India are well known for separatist movements of a transnational dream—often in a single country like Germany. Whatever the in recent years. What is less well known, however, is that the nationalist move- shape of the European community, it is likely that it will have to incorporate some ment under Indian National Congress leadership against the British Raj was of the functions and symbols of the nation-state. Etienne Balibar wonders whether among the strongest in some of these same areas, such as Assam. Below, we will in the building of the fictive ethnicity of Europe the tendency will be predomi- see how identities of groups in China, such as the Manchus, Hakka Chinese, and nantly toward developing a European co-lingualism or in idealizing a ' 'European Subei folk in Shanghai, and their relationship to Chineseness fluctuated over the demographic identity" conceived mainly in opposition to Turks, Arabs, blacks, last two centuries. and other "southern populations" (Balibar 1990, 359). Depending on how these National identities are unstable not only because they are susceptible to splits, boundaries are drawn, the consequences for the "Other" will be significantly whether by alternative criteria of identity formation (for example religion rather different in each case. than language) or by the transference of loyalty to a subgroup (even where the The multiplicity of nation-views and the idea that political identity is not fixed identity of this subgroup is new), but also because all good nationalisms have a but shifts between different loci introduces the idea that nationalism is best seen transnational vision—witness pan-Africanism, pan-Asianism, pan-Europeanism, as a relational identity. In other words, the nation, even where it is manifestly not pan-Islamism, Shiism, Judaism. To be sure, the manner in which territorial na- a recent invention, is hardly the realization of an original essence, but a historical tionalism negotiates its relations with the wider identification takes many forms. configuration which is designed to include certain groups and exclude or margin- Some arguments for national identification find their legitimation in the ultimate alize others—often violently. (Linguistic definitions obviously exclude and mar- achievement of a transcendent order. For instance the reformist nationalism of ginalize different groups from those who seek to define nations by religious or Kang Youwei justified nationalism as a necessary stage in the ultimate achieve- racialist criteria or the criterion of common historical experience.) As a relation- ment of the "great unity" of all peoples of the world (datong). Datong was also ship among constituents, the national "self is defined at any point in time by an ideal that Sun Yat-sen would later celebrate when he linked the destiny of the Other. Depending on the nature and scale of the oppositional term, the national China to that of the oppressed peoples of the world. In Iran, the criterion that self contains various smaller "Others"—historical Others that have effected an came to determine nationality historically had been the Persian language, first in often uneasy reconciliation among themselves and potential Others that are be- the post-Hellenic Persian revival of Ardashir I in A.D. 224 and then in the flow- ginning to form their differences. And it is these potential Others that are most ering of Persian literature under the Arab conquests. The great achievement of deserving of our attention because they reveal the performative principle that the latter period was the Shahnamah of Firdawsi (A.D. 941-1020) in which the create nations—the willing into existence of a nation which will choose to priv- poet created an idealized history of pre-Islamic Iran by deliberately avoiding ilege its difference and obscure all of the cultural bonds that had tied it to its Arabic words as far as possible. Subsequently in the sixteenth century under the sociological kin. Safavis, Iranian distinctiveness came to be expressed through Shiism rather than The most easily identifiable expressions of nationalism as a relationship are language, as Iran became a ' 'bastion of militant Shiism surrounded by hostile the antiimperialist movements the world over. Sun Yat-sen and other Chinese Sunni neighbors .... A fortress mentality, a we and they dichotomy, gradually nationalists believed that it was in the self-interest of Chinese minorities to join developed ..." (Weryho 1986, 52). The nationalism of the present regime of the with the Han majority against the imperialists during the war-ravaged republic ayatollahs is composed of an exclusivist ideology formed by both Persian and because of the security in numbers. When the imperialist threat faded, it became Shiite myths, but it is clear that Shiism, while promoting national greatness, also easy for these minorities to perceive the threat from precisely the numbers of the obliges it to a transnational ideal (Bernard and Khalilzad, 1984). Han majority. The pulling apart of eastern European nation-states in recent times Even in Japan, where one might most expect a perfect congruence between represents the most dramatic indication that the conditions holding one type of loyalty and territory and least expect any external sanctions for nationalist ide- nation together no longer prevail. What is just as important to note are the sub- ology, pan-Asianism and the idea that Japan derived its special position by pro- nationalisms within Lithuania or Georgia as expressions of the great unraveling 164 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 165 of our times. Canada is noteworthy not only because of Quebecois nationalism, around, or from among, preconstituted and resonant representations of commu- but also because of the way in which the nation of Quebec might be challenged nity, as much as by destroying or obscuring other representations. by a hidden Other, such as the Mohawks. The hidden Others are not only other Consider the subtle relationship between identity and meaning in the processes groups but alternative principles of grouping as well. Consider the chameleonlike by which nationalisms and nation-views are formed and repressed, negotiated and identities in western Asia, where a different configuration is invoked depending delegitimated. The argument is often made about nationalism that while one can on whether the threat is directed against Arab nationalism, religious nationalism, have different ideas, or respond to different representations, of the nation, the or territorial nationalism. sense of identification with the nation overrides the difference. It is doubtless true I do not believe that the goal of the historian is simply to celebrate ' 'differ- that there are times when one simply feels American or Chinese, and indeed, ence." Rather, the fact that individuals and groups simultaneously recognize when faced with a common outside threat, differences about what it means to be themselves in and respond to different ideologies and cultures suggests a critical an American or Chinese are often temporarily submerged. This is what we have power in society that is potentially resistant to totalizing ideologies. Historians meant by nationalism as a relational identity. But the strength of the feeling for have traditionally been concerned with the process whereby national identities the nation—which is also exactly what passionately divides fellow-nationals— are formed and have neglected to see that it is the same process whereby other derives from what it means to be American or Chinese. Identities are forged in a identifications and nation-views are repressed and obscured. In the next segment fluid complex of cultural signifiers: symbols, practices, and narratives. The pro- I will try to show how the historian, by being able to take the long view, is cess of community closure is the process of fixing certain signifiers within this uniquely situated to provide a complex accounting of the formation as well as fluid complex and authorizing them to mobilize the affective strength of the oth- the repression of nation-views and national identities. ers. For analytical purposes, I will separate "meaning"—what the nation means to the people—into two areas: (1) discursive meaning and (2) symbolic meaning. In the first realm, I include such subjects as language-as-rhetoric, narratives, and THE ANALYTICS OF COMMUNITY CLOSURE ideology—subjects that have traditionally fallen under the scope of the intellectual historian. In this sense, the nation is a product of the rhetoric and ideas of his- torians, nationalist intellectuals and pamphleteers. In the realm of symbolic mean- Identity and Meaning ing, I include the ensemble of cultural practices of a group such as rituals, festi- While it is important to grasp nationalism as a contingent relationship, we also vals, kinship forms, culinary habits, etc.—subjects traditionally of the social need to understand the mechanisms whereby this relationship or coalition endows historian or anthropologist. In this sense, the nation is an embodiment of the itself with the mystique of a unitary or cohesive nation. Here we will attend to cultural marks of its distinctiveness. While, of course, the two realms are insep- the procedures whereby a history is mobilized to produce "the national identity." arable in the way the nation is imagined by the people, it is useful for the historian It is important to recognize that while the discourses of the nation-state system to be able to separate and subsequently recombine them in order to better conceive importantly shape the meaning of the nation, the social process of community the formation/repression process. closure that we will examine here is hardly unique to the modern nation. In the discursive realm, the meanings of the nation are produced mainly Social science explanations of political identity—ethnic and national—have through linguistic mechanisms. These are the narratives (Bhabha 1990), the sig- centered on the debate over whether these are primordial or instrumentalist. Nei- nifying chains of metaphors, metonyms, and binary oppositions that give meaning ther has much use for historical process since the primordialists simply assume to the nation.7 an essential, unchanging identity whereas the instrumentalists, who usually at- These include not only historical narratives of individual nations such as those tribute the creation of such identities to manipulation by interested elites or others, of India by Jawaharlal Nehru and of China by Sun Yat-sen, but also global dis- often find the past to be irrelevant. What remains unclear in the instrumentalist courses with which these particular narratives have to engage. One such discourse view is what it is that is being manipulated. More recently, the instrumentalist by which early twentieth-century Chinese nationalists constructed their under- position is being revisited by scholars influenced by post-structuralism and dis- standing of modern nations and the nation-state system was the language of evo- course analysis who are extremely suspicous of historicist or even historical ex- lutionary ranking and competition embodied in Social Darwinism. It was a dis- planations, preferring to see identities as ' 'constructed'' by the discourses of the course in which the meaning of a "civilized" nation derived from the model of era. While I am partial to the view that discourses construct their subjects, yet Western nation-states. This discourse was both countered and intertwined with this view, I believe, must be modified to acknowledge that there are multiple the language of "culture" as the irreducible core or essence of the nation. Red- representations, including historical ones, which construct identities. Thus while olent of Herder's romantic opposition to the inexorable evolutionism of "rational a national identity may be invented, its formulators are typically able to build it civilization," nationalist intellectuals in China, India, Japan, and elsewhere de- 166 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizlng National Identity 167 veloped East-versus-West/spiritual-versus-material binaries in which they located marks the sinification of Marxism in which national distinctiveness became em- an irreducible national essence which offered them limited space to resist History. bodied in the particular model of class struggle pioneered by the Chinese. Readers Even when Social Darwinism in China and elsewhere was overtaken in the will be reminded of Iranian Shiite clerics who further Iranian nationalism by 1920s by the antiimperialist rhetoric of victimization and redemption, the notion promoting it as the champion of true Islam. of culture continued its journey into this language of ressentiment. Thus the writ- That the nation is a linguistically gendered phenomenon is evident even from ings of Sun Yat-sen in the 1920s indicated that it was not enough for China to the simple fact that its most common signifier is fatherland or motherland. The aspire to the goal of an industrial civilization. China would fulfill its "sacred master metaphor of the nation as family in turn yields a variety of strategies and mission" by supporting weak and small nations and resisting strong world pow- tactics for incorporating women into the nation. Historically in China, the purity ers. It would do so by transcending Western goals of materialism and violence of the woman's body has served both as metaphor and metonymy of the purity and seek to realize its own cultural destiny in the way of the sage kings (wanq of the nation (see Schoppa 1989, for instance). The bodies of Chinese women dao) of ancient China (Sun 1924, 631-36, 659). More than in China, perhaps raped by foreign invadors—Mongol, Manchu, or Japanese—were both symbol more than anywhere else in the world, the language of redemption was developed and part of the national body violated by these foreigners. However, as Lydia Liu in the hands of Gandhi, for whom the Western nation-states had no place among has recently shown, at least some women registered a strong ambivalence, and civilizations—which he believed were defined principally by their moral qualities. in the case of the writer Xiao Hong, a rejection of nationalism's in-corporation Only if the nation was able to fulfill spiritual and moral goals—and India, where of women. In Liu's analysis of Xiao Hong's novel Field of Life and Death, set according to him these goals had once emerged so brilliantly, was also his test in the period of the Japanese occupation of China, nationalism "comes across as case—could it truly aspire to be a civilized nation. a profoundly patriarchal ideology that grants subject-positions to men who fight Whereas scholarship has posed class as the antithesis of nation (the two vying over territory, possession and the right to dominate. The women in this novel, for the role of historical subject in the modern era), we can also see how, through being themselves possessed by men, do not automatically share the male-centred a variety of rhetorical mechanisms, the trope of class and class struggle has given sense of territory" (Liu 1994, 58). In a deliberate subversion of the trope of the meaning to the nation. Li Dazhao imagined the nation in the language of a class raped woman in nationalist discourse, Xiao Hong's protagonist turns out to have on the international stage: the Chinese people were a national proletariat (within been raped by a Chinese man. "The appropriation of the female body by nation- an international proletariat) oppressed by the Western capitalists (Meisner 1967, alism is contested relentlessly throughout .... (and) raises poignant questions 188). Certainly, this is not unique to China. Abdullah Laroui speaks of a phase about what it means to be Chinese/peasant/woman" (Liu 1994, 45). of nationalism which he calls "class nationalism": In most modern nations the family was valorized as embodying national mo- rality. The obligation to educate and "emancipate" women derived from the Where, in confrontation with Europe, the fundamentalists oppose a culture (Chinese, imperative to produce more efficient mothers who in turn would reproduce, bi- Indian, Islamic) and the liberal opposed a nation (Chinese, Turkish, Egyptian, Ira- ologically and culturally, "superior" citizens (Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989,7- nian), the revolutionary opposes a class—one that is often extended to include all the parts of the human race exploited by the European bourgeoisie. One may refer 9). Tani Barlow (1985) and Wendy Larsen have revealed that in China there to it as class nationalism that nevertheless retains many of the motifs of political existed among the May 4th generation of cultural iconoclasts another strategy and cultural nationalisms; hence the difficulties experienced by many of the analysts whereby women were incorporated into the modern nation. These radicals sought who have attempted to define it. (quoted in Fitzgerald 1988, 10) to absorb women directly as citizens of the nation (guo) and thus force them to reject their kin-based gender roles in the family or jia. The vitriolic May 4th The class-nation of the international arena also has a domestic expression. In attack on the family as site of the reproduction of hierarchy in society may have this conception, the supposed attributes of a class are extended to the nation, and been the reason why the radical intelligentsia found it almost impossible to "iden- the measure to which one fulfilled this criterion ideally governed admissibility to tify women's role within the jia as a position from which to initiate a positive re- the national community. This is true in the case of Chinese Communism, espe- theorization of 'woman' " (Larsen 1991, 11). In doing so, they degendered cially during the Cultural Revolution, when the goal was to purge or disenfran- women (who were to be just like male citizens of the nation), and many important chise undesirable classes in the nation and strive to shape the nation in the image women writers like Ding Ling ultimately abandoned writing about the problem of the idealized proletariat. Here the idea of the nation becomes the site of a of gender. Nonetheless, Larsen observes a kind of resistance to this mode of tension between a revolutionary language with its transnational aspirations and incorporation among some women writers as they began to reject '' 'nation' as the reality of national boundedness. Yet another means whereby the language of an overarching concept within which to frame 'woman' " (Larsen 1991, 13). revolutionary class struggle comes to define the nation is the process of placing These narratives and rhetorics of the nation—particularly historical narratives the "universal" theory of class struggle into a national context. The elevation of that are able to speak to present needs—are only one means of articulating the Mao to the role of supreme theorist (together with Lenin and Stalin) and the nation: the discursive means. Of course, for some individuals a historical narrative creation of the "Chinese model" of revolutionary transformation in the late 1930s itself may be sufficiently powerful to command identification even where no other 168 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 169 cultural commonalities exist. This is the case with nonpracticing, nonbelieving munity—such as language, religion, or common historical experience—thereby Jews who might nonetheless make great sacrifices for the historical narrative that heightening the self-consciousness of this community in relation to those around legitimates the present nation-state of Israel. More commonly, the coming into it. What occurs, then, is a hardening of boundaries. Not only do communities being of a nation is a complex event in which an entire affective, cultural appa- with hard boundaries privilege their differences, they tend to develop an intol- ratus—the realm of symbolic meaning—is mobilized in the task of forming a erance and suspicion toward the adoption of the Other's practices and strive to distinctive political community. And this mobilization must be performed by, and distinguish, in some way or the other, practices that they share. Thus, communities in accordance with, the narratives we have outlined above. In turn, these narratives with hard boundaries will the differences between them. It will be noted that the derive depth only when they are embodied in a culture. The intellectual historian hardening of boundaries is by no means restricted to the nation or to the era of must don the cap of the social historian. the nation-state, but the principle of national formation necessarily involves the Thus the manner in which a nation is created is not the result of a natural closing off of a group whose self-consciousness is sharpened by the celebration process of accumulating cultural commonalities. Rather the process reveals the of its distinctive culture. imposition of a historical narrative of descent and/or dissent upon both hetero- Because the narrative's discursive meaning succeeds in privileging certain geneous and related cultural practices. I will permit myself a deconstructive ex- symbolic meanings as the constitutive principle of a community, it shapes the cess and coin the word discent to suggest the porosity of these two signifiers. It composition of the community: who belongs and who does not, who is privileged reveals how the tracing of a history is frequently linked to differentiating the self and who is not. Thus if common history is privileged over language and race from an Other. The narrative of discent serves as a template by which the cultural (extended kinship), language and race always lie as potential mobilizers of an cloth will be cut and given shape and meaning. When this narrative is imposed alternative nation that will distribute its marginals differently. Thus within the upon cultural materials, the relevant community is formed not primarily by the hard community there will always be other soft boundaries which may potentially creation of new cultural forms—or even the invention of tradition—but by trans- transform into hard boundaries, or new soft boundaries may emerge and transform forming the perception of the boundaries of the community. However, this is not into hard ones. Moreover, boundaries between communities exist along a spec- only a complex process, it is also fraught with danger. Narratives are necessarily trum between hard and soft poles and are are always in flux. This is so as much selective processes which repress various historical and contemporary materials in the modern nation as in premodern societies. Thus the growth of group self- as they seek to define a community; these materials are fair game for the spokes- consciousness does not entail the equal rejection of all others. A community- may men of those on the outs or on the margins of this definition who will seek to occupy a position on the harder side of the spectrum with respect to community organize them into a counternarrative of mobilization. A than to community B, and these positions may change over time as well. Not only do soft boundaries harden, but hard boundaries soften as well, as when a prolonged conflict against a common enemy submerges the differences between two erstwhile foes now united in their common opposition. HARD AND SOFT BOUNDARIES This mode of analysis challenges the notion of a stable community that grad- An incipient nationality is formed when the perception of the boundaries of com- ually develops a national self-awareness like the evolution of a species. Rather it munity are transformed: when soft boundaries are transformed into hard ones. asserts a deliberate mobilization within a network of cultural representations to- Every cultural practice or what I have called "symbolic meaning" is a potential ward a particular object of identification. Various social actors—often different boundary marking a community. These boundaries may be either soft or hard. groups of intellectuals and politicians—develop and deploy narratives to redefine One or more of the cultural practices of a group, such as rituals, language, dialect, the boundaries and identities of a collectivity with multiple identifications. But music, kinship rules, or culinary habits, may be considered soft boundaries if they even when this closure is succesful, it will unravel in time; the privileged practices identify a group but do not prevent the group from sharing and even adopting, that organize this identification will also change. self-consciously or not, the practices of another. Groups with soft boundaries Consider some examples of this process from modern Chinese history. The between each other are sometimes so unselfconscious about their differences that Qing dynasty (1644-1911) originated from a Manchu ethnic community which they do not view mutual boundary breach as a threat and could eventually even maintained an ambivalent attitude toward the dominant Han culture that it ruled. amalgamate into one community. Thus, differences in dietary and religious prac- In the early stages of its rule it actively sought to maintain Manchu distinctiveness tices may not prevent the sharing of a range of practices between local Hui Mus- through a variety of means, including a ban on intermarriage and Han migration lim and Han communities. The important point is that they tolerate the sharing to Manchuria, and the fostering of different customs. In time, however, not only of some and the nonsharing of other boundaries. was the ban on migration and intermarriage ignored, but Manchu embrace of When a master narrative of discent—a discursive meaning—seeks to define Chinese political institutions caused it to blur the distinctions between it and the and mobilize a community, it usually does so by privileging a particular symbolic communities it ruled. More importantly, and unlike the Mongols, the Manchus meaning (or a set of cultural practices) as the constitutive principle of the com- recognized early the roots of politics in culture and rapidly became the patrons 170 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 171 not only of elite culture, but also of popular Han gods like Guandi and Mazu. My effort to link narratives of discent to the self-definition of a group is rel- Thus by the eighteenth century, in terms of their social and cultural relations, the evant not only for ethnic nationalisms such as those of the Manchu or Mongols, Manchu communities resident in the hundreds of garrisons outside of their home- but also for those less visible communities within. These include regional and land in the northeast were losing their literacy in Manchu as well as contact with provincial groupings within the Han such as the Cantonese, the so-called sub- their folk traditions and melding into the general Han populace (Crossley 1990, ethnic groups such as the Tanka boat people, the Hiii and Subei people.8 For 3, 30; Kuhn 1990, 68-70). example, the mid-nineteenth-century Taiping Rebellion was built up by the Hakka At the same time, however, powerful countertendencies worked to shore up— minority of South China who discovered a narrative of discent in a version of or reconstruct—a Manchu identity. Most noteworthy was the effort of the Qi- Christianity which depicted them as a "chosen people.'' This narrative gave them anlong emperor (1736-95) to introduce a classic narrative of discent of the Man- a mission as "god worshippers" in their protracted, dreary battle against the chus—the "Researches of Manchu Origins" discussed by Crossley (1987). earlier settlers in South China, whom they now saw as idolatrous, and caused "Researches" traced the descent of the Manchu clans to the first attestable peo- them to celebrate their own distinctive traditions over those of the larger Han ples of the northeast thereby demonstrating a "racial" distinctiveness which community of which they were a highly ambiguous part. As the movement de- Crossley defines as "immutable identity based on ancestral descent" (1987,762). veloped imperial ambitions, the Hakka coupled their anti-idolatrous message with Moreover, it celebrated the Manchus as inheritors of the imperial tradition of the appeals to an older rhetoric of the struggle of the Han against the Manchu (Kuhn region which was independent of (dissented from) the Han Chinese imperial 1977). The Taiping movement is instructive in showing how a community which tradition and most closely associated with the Jin empire of the twelfth century. had been succesfully hardened by a redemptive narrative of discent was, in an- To be sure, this narrative of discent played a part within a wider representation other political context, obliged to reopen the question of its identity, or rather, of power necessitated by the imperatives of ruling an empire which encompassed identities. both Han Chinese and central Asian polities (Crossley 1987; Kuhn 1990, 69). Confucian universalism was offset by racial exclusivism, because, as Crossley says, every "racial" group—Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, Han, and others—had CONCLUSION their proper status according to their race. These races bore a relationship to the emperor set by the historical role of their ancestors in the creation and develop- Let me end this essay with an illustration of the complex process of nation- ment of the state (Crossley 1987, 780). But this narrative which endorsed a con- formation from the history of the United States, namely Southern nationalism in ception of "race" as a constitutive principle of community, was also motivated the American Civil War. It will, I hope, also reveal one dimension of the insta- by the fear on the part of the emperor of total cultural extinction of the Manchus. bility and repression involved in the idea of the American nation. Although the Thus, the Qianlong emperor took it upon himself to champion the Manchu lan- Southern slaveholder's hierarchical society was different from Northern individ- guage and values and punish those who forgot their roots (Kuhn 1990, 66-68). ualist and entrepreneurial society in the early 1830s, the two accommodated each Manchu identity flowered tragically in the late nineteenth century, both in other quite comfortably within the nation. As Ellis and Wildavsky suggest, it was response to Qianlong's efforts and also as a reaction to a Han ethnic exclusivism only when radically egalitarian abolitionists with a powerful sense of their mission that became most evident during the years of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64). and their refusal to ' 'temporize with evil'' began their agitation in midcentury As early as 1840, in the days before the British attack on the lower Yangzi city that a polarization appeared and Southerners were prompted to develop a coun- of Zhenjiang during the Opium War, the tension in the city led to hostility between ternarrative which infused slavery with value. "Slavery was transformed from an the Manchu soldiers in the garrisons and the civilian Han populace in which instrumental tool into a symbol of the slave-holding community's aspirations and countless Han were slaughtered by Manchu soldiers on the allegation that they sense of identity" (1990, 103). Justifying the master-slave relation as the foun- were traitors. Elliot shows that the entire event was interpreted as ethnic conflict dation of a good society entailed, of course, a head-on clash with the individualist both by survivors and by local historians (Elliot 1990,64). This simmering tension culture of the North. In turn, this induced many in the north to articulate and culminated in the horrifying massacre of Manchu bannermen and their families insist on the narrative celebrating the individualist way of life. during the Taiping Rebellion and again in the republican revolution of 1911 By turning inwards and privileging the social practice of slave ownership, (Crossley 1990, 130, 196-97). Manchus in the republican era sustained their boundaries were hardened between the North and South. Nation-makers in the identity only by hiding it from public view and by quietly teaching the oral South began the task of reordering cultural meanings. For instance, they came to traditions to their children and grandchildren within their homes. Today Manchu reject the Jeffersonian principle of equality of men and turned to concepts of identity finds expression not only in their status as a national minority in the PRC, "hierarchy, rank and order." Boundary construction took on tangible expression but, as Crossley observes, in such forms as the Manchu Association formed in as mail from the North came to be closely monitored, those thought to be abo- Taipei in 1981 (Crossley 1990, 216). litionists expelled, and any relationship with northerners came to be suspect. Thus 11

172 THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONALITY Historicizing National Identity 173 the narrative of the abolitionists transformed what were two patterns of social of no less than 208 pages (1983, 253). In general, the debates revolve around the more relations in one nation into two self-conscious, exclusive nations. obvious factors such as the proportions and role of objective and subjective criteria and And yet, the historical view persists that the North worked nationalistically to how to distinguish ethnicity from nationalism. Less obvious questions, such as the meaning preserve the Union whereas the South was engaged in sectionalism and seces- of heterogeneity in a nation, how some collectivities come to be included and others sionism. David Morris Potter, a Southerner and a prominent historian of the 1950s excluded and how collectivities gain and lose national identification complicate the debate even further. and 1960s, has penetrated the nexus between historical practice and the ideology 2. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the modern philosophical meaning of the of the nation-state with unmatched clarity. What was being repressed when his- "subject" as "More fully conscious or thinking subject ... the thinking or cognizing torians tended to accept the Northern view was not merely the ideology of the agent; the self or ego." The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 2, p. victorious establishment. He writes, 3120. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. 3. See for instance Burton Stein's concept of the segmentary state in India (1980) and Once the ethical question of the character of southern institutions becomes linked Tambiah's galactic polity in the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya (1985). to the factual question of the nature of group loyalties in the South, it becomes very 4. Even a premodern village, community has to be imagined. Etienne Balibar says difficult for the historian to deal with the factual question purely on its own merits. about "imaginary" communities that "Every social community reproduced by the func- If the finding that a majority of southern citizens wanted a nation of their own is tioning of institutions is imaginary, that is, it is based on the projection of individual inseparable from the conclusion that the institution of slavery enjoyed a democratic existence into the weft of a collective narrative, on the recognition of a collective name sanction, it is always possible to reverse the reasoning and to argue that since slavery and on traditions lived as the trace of an immemorial past (even when they have been could not have enjoyed a democratic sanction, therefore the Southern people must created and inculcated in the recent past). But this comes down to accepting that, in certain not have been a "people" in the sense that would entitle them to want a nation of conditions, only imaginary communities are real" (346). their own. (Potter 1968, 64) 5. The discussion is reproduced in the third lecture of nationalism in Sun's Three I began this essay by exploring the relations between our modern values, the People's Principles delivered in 1924. The attack against cosmopolitanism is also directed ideology of the nation-state and historical scholarship. It is easy to see now how against the cosmopolitan strain in the May 4th "new culture" movement. Incidentally, most of the central dichotomies of modernity—such as empire/nation, tradition/ the English version of this lecture contains yet another level of repression for it leaves out modernity, center/periphery (or parochiality)—locate the nation-state in the mor- the vitriolic racialist language characteristic of the original Chinese text and omits many of Sun's references to his debates with the reformist cosmopolitans in the early years of ally privileged term. Historical writing has contributed the dynamic that links the century. these terms in an epochal narrative of enlightenment and modernization and in 6. In case it appears that the advocates of the ancient nation always win out over the doing so has secured the transparency of the nation-state's claim to historical advocates of the future nation, witness Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution. There subjecthood. Social historians and others, while sometimes defying this claim in is no question that Mao's radical utopianism was intensely nationalist in character and practice, have not constructed a theoretical challenge to history as the History of understood as a form of Chinese socialism. At the same time, its passionate utopianism the nation-state. The alternative I have proposed has emphasized the multiple anchored the foundations of the new community not in the historical past, but in the sources of identity creation, the construction/repression of narratives of discent liberated future. which often posture as eternal, essential or evolutionary history, and in place of 7. For a good example of a binary opposition defining the national identity of Austra- a teleological movement toward a more cohesive ideal, a mobilization toward lian settler culture see Wolfe (1991). Australian settlers adapted the anthropological notion particular objects of identification. In this way, we may view the histories of of "dream time" and the Dreaming complex—the precontact idyll in which the aborigines nations as contingently as nations are themselves contingent. But this is no more lived—as timelessness and spacelessness, and they counterposed it to their own idea of "awakenment" embodied in the doctrine of progress and legitimation of colonization. By than a beginning, for as David Potter suggests, we have as yet no response to the doing so, they were able to establish a claim to the land by romanticizing the "dreaming" great challenge of writing a history from outside the ideology of the nation-state. aborigines and thus excluding them from any terrestrial claims. That challenge is to come to grips with one's own ethical values as a historian, 8. Consider the way in which the hardening of boundaries between Chinese and Jap- and the enormity of it derives from the fact that these values have themselves anese during the Japanese occupation in Shanghai affected the internal contours of the been intimately shaped by the nation-state. Chinese nation. Emily Honig writes of the enduring prejudice against the underclass Subei people of northern Jiangsu in Shanghai, where a common curse is "Subei swine." After the 1932 Japanese attack on Shanghai, the Subei people became identified as Japanese NOTES collaborators and during the occupation of 1937-45, the expression "Jiangbei (Subei) traitor" and the accompanying hostility toward them became widespread. While there may ]. In fact, the effort to define nationalism, nation-state and related concepts is by no have been an element of truth to the accusations of collaboration, Honig observes that means over and turns out to have been a minor industry over the last century. 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